Thief Condition/Survivability Build Help! PVE
Hello!
PvE Condition is a very solid build and a great survival build. You are going to want to focus on Caltrops, and evading/dodging. You gain quite a bit of swiftness, stealth, and evasion in this build—making it ideal for pulling large groups of 5-7 mobs at a time.
Your focus for this build is not on direct damage, but laying as many stacks of bleed on a target as you can before you evade out. You are primarily focused on evade rolling under people, doing your #3 Death Blossom, and laying your Caltrops. If you are stealth and can lay Caltrops on multiple targets, lead with that, otherwise just do #3 to pull agro.
This build shines bright in PvE and pulling large packs of things. Mostly all of your skills proc evades or dodges and keep you from taking any damage for close to 70% of the fight, you heal passively from your initiative you use, and you regain 3 initiative above the normal rate. This is a very bad 1v1 build in WvW, but it is the prefect build for a thief who wants to solo and entire supply camp without even loosing 15% health.
Below is a link to the build, let me know if you have any other questions! PS. This build is/was my current build for a LONG time. I swapped some of the gear for Traveler’s for the MF to make it even more of a true PvE build.
-Icarus
- If you are building right, you should have about 15-17k health, and about 1300+ condition damage. You should be hitting level 80 mobs for about 110+ damage per a tick of bleeding. Your poison AoE from your short-bow should hit for about 220+ per a tick of poison.
Hello!
I’m currently a level 77 condition thief, loving what I’m getting so far. I don’t have 10 gold yet to unlock the grandmaster traits but ideally I would be running a 0/0/20/20/30 trait line (currently im doing 10/0/20/20/30 because might as well spend the traits on SOMETHING right?). My build also focuses primarily on PvE and dungeons specifically like CoF. Here’s my build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlcmKP3eS6E+5EBnCniUvHfFtktTxV1KA
To counter the squishiness, I found that Signet of Malice is absolutely VITAL. On large mobs when you DB you easily hit 3-4 enemies x3 each on every DB that you do, triggering 9-12 counts of heal from sig of malice (which for me is just over 100 per heal) and when you drop caltrops on them you trigger SoM per every stack of bleed. For perspective, I have 16.340 health at the moment, and i’m running no exotic gear right now. 3 DB on 3 enemies gives me 9 hits, that’s 900 HP on one DB. With my build you can always spam DB x3, and squeeze out 4 quite easily if you use steal. That’s 3600 HP back, in PvE running into a mob of 3+ is nothing out of the ordinary. Add that to assassin’s reward — I think the math on that is (amount of initiative spent) x (your healing power, for me 210). Using 4 DBs will be 20 initiative spent in one initiative burst, thats another 4200 HP healed. Add THAT to the bleeds stacked on caltrops, which is kind of variable for me so I won’t try to quantify that, but suffice it to say it adds another 1k of HP back, usually more depending on how good the hit is and how big the mob.
Of course, there are going to be the “HOLY SHIZZNET BATMAN!!!” emergencies when you suddenly have no initiative and running really low on health, for which the anti-panic button skill known as shadow refuge can come save ur behind. Pop it, it heals you some while you’re in the circle of shadow refuge, but if you want you can switch to short bow and spam the 4 skill (it doesn’t take you out of stealth) or run up to enemies and drop caltrops (ditto), this will deal some damage and also trigger some SoM heals.
As stated above, the play style is mostly getting in melee range, drop caltrops, DB till initiative run out, dodge some (dropping caltrops from your uncatchable trait), steal if your steal is not on cool down to get some initiative back and DB again, maybe stealth out and run if needed while you wait for the bleeds to wreck havoc. It’s really fun!
Trait points in trickery helps immensely here, as the +3 initiative you get in the master minor trait of trickery allows you to drop 3 full DB’s at full initiative. Also, the first minor trait gives you +3 initiative upon stealing. Combine that with the major traits of shadow arts (stealing gives u 2 secs of stealth, going into stealth removes 1 condition every 3 secs — note that this also removes 1 condition the second you go to stealth so really you get 2 condition removal) and you get excellent synergy going.
Trait points in acrobatics allows you to dodge a lot which is not only a defensive benefit obviously but also offensive. Swiftness on dodge (1st minor trait) makes you move around a lot faster, gain might when you dodge is EXCELLENT because might stacks your condition damage. You gain some of your endurance back when dodging with feline grace, so sync that with 2 secs of swiftness, caltrops from uncatchable and the might, all that just from one roll! I use assasin’s reward as my second major trait, it gives a little bit of heal, it’s kind of subtle you don’t really notice its effects until you running a different trait and then you notice you’re dying a lot more than before!
In terms of gear, basically I’m getting the full armor set from CoF, this gives power vit condition. I have no use for power but there is no tough vit condition gear as of yet, so I try to bolster my toughness using superior rune of the undead (which gives condition damage and toughness). I slot my jewelry with some combination of vitality toughness and condition, I haven’t really committed on anything yet here.
Again for perspective, im currently wearing level 70 all blue gear (minus my gloves which is a level 71 exotic) all specced for power/vit/condition. Cheap as hell, but great bang for the buck, I’m wearing these for the time being until I get enough CoF tokens for the CoF power/vit/condition armor. This results to:
1298 power (1927 attk)
918 prec (something pathetic crit)
1168 tough (1870 armor)
1435 vit (16,346 health)
1037 condi (7% condition duration)
20% boon duration, steal recharge rate, and 210 healing.
Since I dont have the money yet to unlock the grandmaster traits, I dumped 7 pts (will be 10 by the time I’m 80) into power rather than into trickery, which is why my power is relatively high and my condition damage is relatively low. Still, currently this build serves my purposes quite well!
Hope this answers your question, let me know if I should clarify anything.
(edited by Silver.4798)
Sorry for the really long post, that wasn’t my initial intent =(
Thank you everyone for the input! I didn’t expect such fantastic information in so little time!
Silver, Thanks for the post, very helpful indeed, I was thinking of running with a 0/0/20/20/30 build. As for weapons what would you use in terms of stats? Power/Vitality and Condition? Im not entirely sure if you added this in your post (If you did im sorry!)
I will probably run that build in any case. Thank you very much!
I haven’t picked up the exotic daggers yet but yes I was thinking of running 2 condition/vit/power daggers — because why not, everything else seems to be specced for that lol. Max stat for exotic daggers of that spec (off the top of my head) is something like 60/60/90 power/vit/condition, not too shabby.
Right now I’m playing around with the idea of maybe picking up some +heal items, maybe drop the condition damage down a bit. I’m debating if there really is that big a diff between 1300 CD vs 1100, and if I’ll be better served getting more survivality by +heals for my SoM… I’ll let you know.
Hopefully you enjoy my build as much as I am!